According to the Pew Research Center, some women have really done it all-and that includes being mothers.
Many readers are likely familiar with women’s growing rate of educational attainment. They’ve also likely heard that more women are forgoing child bearing. In fact, about one in five women 40-44 has never had a child in recent statistics. That’s up from one in ten in the 1970s. Yet, interestingly, one trend that has not stayed consistent is the association of higher education with a higher rate of childlessness. It used to be the case that, the more educated a woman was, the less likely she was to be a mom. Not anymore.
Pew’s report shows that women with Ph.D.’s and other professional degrees are actually more likely to have children than other women with only a bachelor or master’s degree. They’re also much more likely to be moms than women with their degrees a decade ago! Maybe these high achievers engaged in more career and family planning to achieve balance at the outset than women used to or work in more mom-friendly environments. Check out the chart below to see how women’s educational attainment associates with having children.
